Here are two good ones: Use Google Translate's "take a picture" feature. If you're reading a book in Chinese or have anything in Chinese printed out, then all you need to do is to take a picture of it and highlight the bit you want to translate. Google Translate will give you the pinyin, but if you can't find it you can also copy and paste that text into a better dictionary like Pleco or something. I think Pleco actually has this feature, too, but it might not be free. Pleco has a handwriting feature, but I have never used it (you might also have to pay for this and you need to install a handwriting keyboard on your phone - the latter is really simple). If you go on your computer, and go on Google Translate and then use its handwriting feature. If you have some experience with Chinese, you will pretty much be able to guess how to write the character. If you don't, then just start from the top left and work down to the bottom right (this will be right most of the time). Learning how to use an actually Chinese dictionary requires some knowledge of radicals, but it's not actually that complex. Chris Parker from "Fluent in Mandarin" does an excellent video on how to look up characters in the traditional way on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRtaeO7rfF8

Without pinyin that if you want to remember words, you'd better know what'the root of the group of words, I can give you a example：for this word 河(he2 river) it combines 氵（the key part of this word) and 可(this part could be changed in another words) .when you thinking words with the part of 氵. those worlds could have the meaning about water or liquid.even the verb also describe some action with it For example : 汗(sweet) 河（river) 酒( alcohol or wine or liquor) 汤(soup) etc. For verb example :游泳(swim）滑冰（skate) etc Hope can help you with these example.

I use the Pleco app...you can either copy the character by writing it with your finger on the phone, or you can hold the camera over it and it will tell you character pinyin along with definition. Definitely a fantastic app for studying

yes,there are 26 characters ,if you know every one,you can read any chinese word,because every chinese word's pronounce from this 26 character.i can help you learn this 26 characters well.after you master it,i can show you how it works.

I have 现代汉语字典 and I have no idea of this specific Character'你' 1， I do know the the main component of it is '亻' ,which we called 偏旁or部首 (pianpang)，... I don‘t know the pronunciation of 亻either，and not much people knows it,dont worry about it. Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters) and most important thing is, there are literally more than 600 Characters have this specific component 亻 .......亿、仁、什、仃、仆、仉、仇、化、仂、仍、仅、仨、仕、仗、代、付、仙、仡、仟、伋、仫、仪、他、伟、仔、伏、优、伐、价、件、仵、伥........ fyi, 亻means 人,(google 单人旁，人字旁)，it's like a prefix in Mandarin ，anyway just check the wikilink up there 2, I count the the number of 笔画, check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJKV_character) 亻is made of one"Throw away" mountained on one "Vertical" ，which means it is made by 2 strokes this information will lead me to a specific page of the dic index ，on Page 16，there are a list of all those chracters with 亻 then I will locate the specific Character by the number of strokes of the rest part. 尔，five strokes it is listed under ‘五画’ five strokes then I easily get it ，你 page924. if there are an idex for 笔画 only ，it is same ，because you only need to count the number of stroke，你，seven strokes in total. just took a little longer to locate it. so learn some Stroke, get some 'Radical' done buy a junior dic that's it and also google translate plug-in（add-on？） for multi browsers， and there are so many googleable online dics，all we need is copy and paste there